A Following Holy Life. Kenneth Stevenson

writing today. Taylor must have been well aware of the ‘Ars Moriendi’ tradition of late mediaeval Catholicism, and writings in this area from the sixteenth century such as Thomas Becon (c. 1511–67) and William Perkins (1558–1602). But he is starting from scratch, and while some of the soul-searching may ring a shade lugubriously on modern ears, his association of sin and suffering clearly dated, and his opposition to death-bed repentance unacceptable today, it is a book that could, if abbreviated and presented in a fresh manner, provide a great deal of comfort to people who are afraid when their lives are drawing to an end.

      Main areas of controversy

      Controversy is the meat and drink of every creative theological writer or preacher down the ages. Taylor lived in an age of acute religious differences, and although we in our time are not without our controversies, it is sometimes hard for us to understand fully the religio-political reasons that led to the Civil War and the execution of King Charles I. Taylor wrote at a particularly nervous time in the Church’s life. While many of the areas of conflict were part and parcel of living at the time, there are four in particular that stand out from the point of view of an early twenty-first century reader.

      The first concerns original sin. We need to see this in the context of Taylor’s theology, rather than isolate it as a ‘problem’ that he suddenly had to face with the publication of ‘Unum Necessarium’ in 1655. We also need to see Taylor as a moral theologian, with an edifice shaped by the materials we have observed in ‘Great Exemplar’ (1649) and ‘Holy Living’ (1650) published only half a decade before. For Taylor, to live a ‘holy life’ must be the starting-point, whether we are looking in the first instance at Christ’s life or our own. It is then necessary to reflect either on the narrative and meaning of Christ’s life and ministry or on the key virtues of godly living by faithful disciples. Once these foundations are in place, as the openings for the life of grace, then we are ready to confront ourselves and the world in the raw, aided by the sacraments, by prayer, by godly wisdom, applied to daily living.

At a time when the choice in moral theology seems to have been between neat Catholic distinctions between different sorts of sin (which Taylor rejects) and an overly Calvinist view of imputed righteousness, Taylor saw the weakness of both approaches, and courageously sought a middle line. So when ‘Unum Necessarium’ (1655) appeared, it was only a detailed outworking of what Taylor had already written in a different context, and what he was to go on to apply in an even wider one in ‘Ductor Dubitantium’ (1660) five years later. No wonder Taylor could not believe original sin was an inherent evil, but the effect of one sin, which does not destroy our liberty, and it cannot damn an infant eternally. Assessments of Taylor here vary. For Spinks, it still leaves him – and his baptism rite – open to the criticism of being too strong on obedience, and insufficiently weighted towards justification. It is the old balance between divine initiative in the gift of grace and forgiveness, and human response in repentance and good works, or as he would say, ‘holy living’. For others, like Stranks and McAdoo, he has had the courage to challenge an Augustinian–Calvinist establishment that was unable to accept a different Christian anthropology. McAdoo goes so far as to contend that here, again, he was ahead of his time.[19] This is clearly an area that has been open to considerable theological debate in the period since.

      The second controversy concerns toleration. Once again, we in our time find it hard to understand a very different world, in which people could take up arms to fight for one religious and political system only. So for Taylor to write ‘Liberty of Prophesying’ in 1647, well into the Civil War, was something of a risk, given his Royalist sympathies and Laudian liturgical convictions. He didn’t pull his punches with the intolerant, to say nothing of those who would use coercion to get their own way. We have already described its main intentions, and hinted at potential contradictions in the tough line he found himself having to take as a bishop nearly twenty years later in Ulster. Taylor used his considerable grasp of history to bring out the best case for variation and breadth, looking for an irreducible minimum for an orthodox faith, liturgically lived. As Boone Porter has observed, Taylor was one of the few writers of his time who saw the voluntary character of Anglicanism – it was destined to live a life alongside other Christian communities, because of the sheer impossibility of imposing one, unifying Christian Church on the entire populace. That is one of the reasons why he details the views of those whose opinions he rejects, whether it is the Anabaptists or the Roman Catholics. When, for example, televised services are broadcast nowadays to celebrate national events and tragedies that are so overtly ecumenical, we can discern how far-sighted Taylor was in this respect; this kind of view would not have been welcome to those of more stolid minds, for whom the religious controversies of their time were about winners and losers.

      The third concerns death-bed repentance. This is a theme that recurs in Taylor’s writings, and it is something that jars with an age like ours, just as it could also be said to be inconsistent with Taylor’s universal view about the love of God. He devoted a whole sermon to the ‘invalidity of a late of death-bed repentance’, and ‘Holy Dying’ (1651) has some chilling words on this matter, cautioning against ‘a repentance not to be repented of’, because of its superficiality. Once again, this needs to be seen in the context of Taylor’s age, when sickness could more easily lead to death, confronting the sufferer sometimes with a sudden fear of death. The other context is Taylor’s criticism of Roman Catholic practice at the time, which he probably saw as too easy and insufficiently sincere.

      And the fourth concerns sexuality. We have already discussed Taylor’s ‘Discourse on the Nature and Offices of Friendship’ (1657), in effect the letter he had written to Katherine Philips, known to be a lesbian. There will be those who may well question that Taylor’s intentions are as open and tolerant as we have suggested, and every age that has to grapple suddenly with something apparently new (and therefore deeply controversial) can try to find a precedent in an overlooked corner of the past. But my own view, for what it is worth, is that Taylor was well aware of the homosexual underworld that existed in seventeenth-century England, and wanted to take a ‘pastoral’ approach to it rather than the more usual censorious one of his time. Of course Taylor is dealing with friendship in general, but the way he writes in open code to Katherine Philips at the start is its own admission that Taylor knows exactly what he is doing and that the recipient knows as well. The fact that the ‘Discourse’ went into its eighth (and last) edition in 1686 – less than thirty years later – probably indicates that this item from Taylor’s pen had a market. The man who wrote in such an open way about heterosexual love in ‘Holy Living’ (1650) only seven years before could – just possibly – be writing now in a more circumspect manner about another form of love. But even if such an interpretation is rejected, the basic tenor of what Taylor has to say about Christian friendship strikes a strong chord with an age like ours, where it scarcely figures in religious discourse, and often languishes from neglect – and suspicion – in popular culture.

      Liturgical theologian – and ordination

      We have mentioned on a number of occasions so far Taylor’s proclivity at writing prayers. These are clearly not intended as mere intermissions. They are an essential part of Taylor’s intentions. So it is not just ‘Great Exemplar’ (1649) that is littered with them. They appear as an integral part of ‘Holy Living’ (1650) and ‘Holy Dying (1651), as well as in his other works. ‘Holy Living’ even includes a prayer for a debtor himself to use to be apprised of the importance of restitution. Admittedly, they are devotional prayers for the individual to use. But as a phenomenon, not by any means unique to Taylor, they do have the effect of showing him to be what would nowadays be called a ‘liturgical theologian’, as Boone Porter has suggested.

      But liturgical theology is about public prayer as well, and in this connection we must mention his ‘Collection of Offices’ (1658). When set alongside his ‘Apology for authorized and set forms of Liturgy’ (1649) and ‘Golden Grove (1655), it is clear that how people pray when they gather for worship was for him a self-defining aspect of the Church. How we pray expresses what we believe – or, according to the old theological adage, ‘lex orandi lex credendi’, ‘the rule of prayer is the rule of belief’. And that is borne out in the firm line he takes on ordination in ‘Episcopacy Asserted’ (1642), as well